


Momento Mori

by Wishme



Series: 30 Day OTP Challenge [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:57:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wishme/pseuds/Wishme





	Momento Mori

Sweat beads beneath the collar fitted snug along his neck. July in Tennessee means even the trees weep from humidity. He resists the impulse to run his finger around the collar, tug some air inside, ease the length of fabric looped and knotter at the base of his throat, but the mission called. They stand close enough to brush shoulders, two men in among a sea of black suits and black dressed. Only a few sob convincingly, few others make no pretense of grief, chests inhaling shallowly against the heavy magnolia air.

Dean isn’t sure why Cas dragged him out to the burial site. Their job had been finished inside—open casket viewings made identifying the cause of death far simpler. That and the proximity to the mortuaries files that so conveniently held the autopsy report. Nothing weird about this one, just an unfortunate case of mixed meds and wrong diagnoses.

But Cas had insisted they follow the crowd to the gravesite for the internment. Shifting his weight, Dean looks at his friend from the corner of his eye. The former angel stands ramrod straight, face impassive. Following the angle of his gaze, Dean sees his focus rests on a woman in a simple black dress. She wears no makeup, no jewelry but for the small stones winking in her earlobes, her gaze resting not on the minister but on the now-closed coffin, spine straight, face composed. Young, but not too young, Dean would guess late 30s, she is clearly not the widow. That is the woman enveloped in swaths of black cloth and lace, sobbing carefully into a handkerchief that never seems to get damp. But Cas’s eyes don’t so much as flicker from the young woman.

Guests stream down the hill once the mercifully short service is done, heading for cars in the direction of the potato salad and wine of the wake. The hunters hang back; the young woman remains, staring down into the cut earth, head bowed, shoulders slumped. Cas toes across the damp grass, Dean slow in his wake, to face her across the gravesite. After a few minutes she raises her eyes. Dark circles bruise the skin under her eyes soft with crying, sharp lines radiating from their corners. This is the face of grief. “I’m sorry,” the former angel murmurs. She ducks her head, “Me too.”

“Your brother,” Cas ventures. Her eyes snap up, “Yes.”

“I’ve lost mine too. He has as well.” Dean nods his assent, hand coming to rest on top of the one Cas placed on his arm. Nodding, she offers them a ghost of a smile, “At least you have each other,” and walks across the grass to the waiting car, spine rebuilding with each step, face locking into place.

Cas leans into Dean’s side, watching the car exit the cemetery. An engine coughs behind them, expelling the gravediggers who will lower the casket, fill the hole with dirt, lay the sod on top, and forget the name on the headstone.

They’re halfway to the car when Dean murmurs, “What’s up, man?”

The other man pauses in his stride. “This,” his gesture encompasses the cemetery, “is not something we do. When one of my brothers falls in battle, it is a loss, but not one of great import other than the fact that our number has decreased. The sort of grief you feel—we don’t have burials. There are no testaments to the dead. As we’re not born, we can’t die—we just cease to exist. Most are forgotten, those who are remembered are recalled by few and only for their deeds, not who they were. Even Lucifer—it’s his betrayal thats felt still, not the loss of him as a voice among the host. But I remember each of my brothers as they fell.”

The eyes that meet Dean’s are full of ancient grief. He pulls the angel into his arms, wrapping him close. Losing Sam was hard enough. Hell, losing Adam was hard and they’d only begun to know each other. He can’t imagine it compounded over millennia, over hundreds. “Let’s go home.”

Ignoring Cas’s protests, Dean bundles him through the front door of the bunker to the back area they’d turned into a garden. “Stay right there.” He can hear the angel rolling his eyes as he stalks back inside. Thank god for IKEA-he grabs the bag of 100 count tealights Sam has insisted they get “for emergencies” and his trusty Zippo from his jacket pocket. Cas hasn’t strayed from his seat and watches Dean as he moves around the garden, strewing candles wherever there’s space. A box of matches appears in his field of vision. “Help me light them.”

Each candle is lit with a name, not enough for each of the legions of angels lost but enough to serve as an effigy. Soon the garden is awash in soft light and they retreat back to the bench. Unshed tears shimmer in two pairs of eyes as the angel and his hunter wind themselves around each other.

Later, in the dark of their room, Cas will whisper benedictions of love and fear into the nape of Dean’s neck, against his spine and calves: _I need you, don’t leave me, I love you_. Capturing his lips, he pours the same word back into his angel.


End file.
